


Unconventional Wisdom

by Jadedphase



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Gen, jasper being jasper, mention of stigma of mental illness, monty is brilliant in his own way, monty trying to protect the part of the world he cares about, monty's mom trying to be parental
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 08:49:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1598873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadedphase/pseuds/Jadedphase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Monty has grown up with Jasper always being there, but also always with the nagging shadow of knowing there might be something a little....different about about his best friend that simply doesn't matter to him.<br/>But even the smallest flaw can be dangerous in their gray-walled world where existence is a luxury granted to those who meet the ideal standards; a fact that, for Jasper's sake, Monty fears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unconventional Wisdom

Monty's mother had told him once, years after her son had first returned home with the strange little boy adorned in dusty clothes and sporting a grin nearly as over-sized as the goggles perched atop his messy hair and proclaimed the wide-eyed child his new best friend, that Jasper wasn't exactly the same as Monty. 

He was a nice enough boy, she had assured him, and there was nothing really wrong with his parents being Engineers of course; but there was simply something different about Jasper. And it wasn't because he was taller than Monty, or rail-thin in comparison, or even because Jasper lived in a different section of the ARK than Monty's family; all those things were different than Monty but not the different from everyone else sort of way that she meant.

She claimed to have seen it from the very first time she'd met him, which Monty had found doubtful as he and Jasper had met at the age of only six and that seemed far too early for anyone to be making judgements about people. 

Up until that point Monty had never considered what different meant, and in the span of a few hours before his young mind had simply moved on to other things he had wondered if different meant bad. Because bad people, to Monty's simple knowledge then, went away because they couldn't be around everyone else and brought trouble with them.

He tried to reason with himself that it couldn't mean bad because Jasper was the best person he had ever met, he told the best jokes and knew the best places to hide when to older kids were being mean, and he always, always remembered Monty was there instead of forgetting like everyone else seemed to do so often. There was no way that he could be anything like bad; his mother must have meant something that he didn't understand at that point and armed with this simple faith in what he knew Monty had let the idea go.

At the age of ten, well past the time she assumed their friendship would lose the spark and connection, she finally approached Monty after she'd discovered her son once again toiling late hours to finish a school project he and Jasper had put off doing until the last moment. 

It wasn't really Jasper's fault that he sometimes got distracted or stopped focusing on what needed to be done, she had assured Monty as kindly as she could. It was her job to be his mother and with that came the burden of educating him about the ways of the world. 

It was because Jasper had a sort of defect in the wiring of his brain that used to be treated with medication a long time ago, one that wasn't there because of any one reason so much as it could have been a dozen of them; only that sometimes people have one little thing out of place and because of that it makes it hard or them to calm down and pay attention. 

But now medicine was much harder to come by and people just had to deal with those problems and learn to adjust, that it wasn't Monty's job to make sure Jasper paid attention because that was far too much of a task for one little boy to handle. She didn't expected that of him and neither did anyone else, but mostly she worried that Monty would lose too much of his own direction trying to steer Jasper in the right one. 

The way she had said it, trying to sound kind while she sat on his bed and told him there was something wrong that nobody was going to try to help make right, had struck Monty as such a cruel thing to say about the best friend he'd ever had. 

Jasper wasn't defective, he had argued, machines could be defective but people couldn't; if Jasper was different then it didn't make it bad. To his young mind one of the worst things in the world was being labeled anything but normal because people who weren't normal very often disappeared.  
In the end, once Monty had grown so upset he was nearly to the point of tears, his mother had reassured him that Jasper was not going to disappear and that everything would be okay. But he didn't believe her anymore, not after what she had told him.

Nobody knew the anxiety that built up in Monty from that evening, he was very skilled at smiling and maintaining calm even if for nothing more than an outward appearance, but there had been too many nights to count where he had laid awake pondering the unfair nature of the world where his best friend could have something wrong inside that couldn't be fixed.

The days were easier, when he could go to classes and laugh with Jasper and pretend that everything was okay again, when happiness was always right within reach and usually laughing over something only the two of them found funny. But even Jasper never entirely caught on to why Monty preferred him to stay as long as possible, until excuses ran dry and his parents would send Jasper off home and Monty to the bed and the company of his reeling thoughts. 

With time the worry grew less intense as his own confidence that he could prove the world incorrect grew; there was nothing wrong with Jasper and even if nobody else listened Monty was sure of the fact. So while Monty was an obedient son, so far as his parents knew, and learned all they had to teach him about plants and the job he would one day likely inherit, his mind still strayed elsewhere. 

And with that straying came new ideas, a curious child grew into a teen eager to experiment with possibilities; his sharp mind craved more than the simple lessons offered to it. And that was ultimately how Monty came to discover the way certain plants could offer an escape from the gray walls and his parents' constant coaxing that he attend to his lessons and responsibilities. 

The first high he had ever known had been terrifying and exhilarating at the same time, and settled over him a sort of calm peace that Monty had been chasing for years without knowing it. That night he had come home alone and crawled into bed to the soundest sleep he'd known in too long to remember, content and so pleasantly soothed that everything else was only fuzzy hints at the edges of his sleepy mind. 

He knew it wasn't allowed but ultimately Monty decided he simply could not give up that tiny little slice of freedom, he remained dedicated to the things he saw as important and the rest grew so much less daunting; he had begun to wonder just how it was that people didn't see the benefit of that calm in such a simple little flower and why they were so afraid of what it could offer them. 

For months it was a comfortable pattern; class and then Jasper would stay a while, and before bed if he was feeling uneasy Monty would turn to that escape. If his parents noticed, and he as almost sure they must have, they said nothing for the sake of not wanting to lose their son; though if it was to the law or to the restless nights returning he never knew which. 

Then he noticed a change that made those old worries strike back up, it had been gradual enough not to be obvious before until the afternoon they were writing reports for class and Jasper kept tapping his heel against the floor, sending little vibrations through the small space of Monty's room and causing a faint thumping sound.  
When Monty had told Jasper to knock it off the motion had stopped, but a few minutes later Jasper was tapping his fingers against his book instead while he read. And it was at that point that Monty realized that it wasn't Jasper trying to annoy him so much as it was Jasper not being able to sit entirely still.  
The more he thought about it the more Monty had come to the conclusion that Jasper had been restless lately, months of occasional twitches and high strung conversations. And Monty himself had been feeling oddly, a manifest of age and puberty his mother had assured him, and harmless. 

But what if it wasn't so harmless for Jasper?

That evening Monty had contemplated the possibilities. If something in Jasper's brain was wired differently then what would happen after classes when they were expected to manage jobs and adult lives? Would Jasper even make it there, or would he end up floated because it seemed like any medical issue that could not be treated easily was reason to be removed from society and imprisoned. It was astonishingly unfair to be murdered for something a person had no control over, something that really was only a part of what made Jasper the energetic, eager and cheerfully goofy guy that Monty knew his best friend to be.  
Would they really float Jasper for not having the same focus as everyone else?

Monty knew that people had been removed for far less, he had learned a long time past that life on the ARK was stable and mundane but it was not by any means unbiased. Not when the rules that gave his family a better home and more comforts denied his best friend the same because Jasper's parents had a less scientific job. That was the ugly edge to the way the world worked, and Monty knew it. 

He also knew, however, that he was not willing to allow his best friend to be taken away.

Monty hadn't intended to share his discovery with Jasper, on the case that he might be caught for it sooner or later, but in the end he had to make a choice; since there wasn't medicine to fix the constant motion of Jasper's brain and body maybe there was something else that could.

And the one thing Monty knew for himself that eased away all of the anxieties for him were those wonderful little flowers, what tipped the scales in the end was the oddest of things; a comment from his mother one as he sat reading about how if she didn't know better she might have thought he hadn't moved in hours. 

Monty liked to think, looking back, that it had been her subtle way of telling him something like a secret that she knew he needed but couldn't risk telling him outright, a choice she had to leave to him to make. 

But it was really no choice, not truly, for Jasper's sake.

The first time he had offered them to Jasper, neatly wrapped up in the thin paper like Monty had read about in a book he had thrown out for fear of it being found, he had been met with an uncertain look. But Jasper, being who he was and trusting Monty to always have the plan that would set things right, had only needed a little nudge to take the lit object and draw off the end. 

A short coughing fit later and Jasper was laughing, a disjointed, comical giggle that Monty had never heard before but stuck him as hilarious in the smoky haze of his bedroom. Before long they were both laughing and staring at the ceiling, having circular conversations about life and Jasper was mumbling about how the walls didn't feel so tight right then and the colors weren't too sharp with the blurry edges to them. Monty could only agree, eyelids heavy and lost to his own thoughts; when he reached over to give Jasper a nudge to see if he was still alive he was offered a grumble and a playful shove in return while Jasper lay there relaxed. And after that Monty lost connection with the moment and drifted, when he woke his room was silent other than the sound of Jasper snoring softly where he lay on the floor next to him. 

His mother had given him a curious look in passing when they had bolted out the door the next morning before she could stop them for questions that Monty wasn't sure he would have known how to answer. He had his suspicions at the time but didn't know for certain how much she knew and what she assumed.  
What he did know though was that the next day Jasper was his usual talkative self, and really the staring into space and the random comments didn't ease very much but the twitch and rattle to his presence didn't seem quite as terrible. 

It gave Monty a little glimmer of hope, that maybe if whatever made Jasper different was there to stay at least it could be obscured a tiny bit, just enough to secure his friend's safety from a fate he didn't deserve simply for being born the way he had. And there was no guilt in that for Monty, there was honestly very little in most things for him when he finally understood that if the world wasn't going to play fair then he'd make up his own rules, but especially not in knowing it might help Jasper.

After that Monty and Jasper stuck even closer, once Monty had begun to test the waters offering other concoctions to people in the ARK as weary of the gray walls as himself Jasper simply took it as normality in the way that Jasper trusted Monty to be _his_ normality. The same as it became their shared norm for Jasper to spend most of his evenings in Monty's room under the guise of school work while they discussed every topic that crossed their foggy minds and laughed the hours away until sleep.

Once or twice Monty spotted his mother's shadow at the bottom of his door, gone long before he could more than barely notice it. She never said anything about it if she did wonder what they were up to, other than to remark now and then about how Jasper needed to remember to stop leaving his goggles on the kitchen table when he came over.

**Author's Note:**

> When I sat down to write this I took into consideration several things. Being an avid fan of both Jasper and Monty, as well as aware of Jasper's excitable nature in the pilot and his anxious tendencies he seemed likely to have some form of ADHD.  
> And since the headcanon of Monty stumbling across the effects of drugs in normal experimental fashion made the most sense to me it followed course in my brain that maybe there was a more substantial reason for him being will to risk Jasper's safety over being caught with 'herbal medicine' than simply wanting somebody to share his high.
> 
> Plus admittedly the headcanon that Monty tries to look after Jasper because Jasper is rather needy without fully knowing it himself is one that I see so resoundingly in the show and makes me grin. XD


End file.
